o long as we are a
commercial people, vast warehouses, piled from cellar to roof with heavy
merchandise, must abound in all our cities. And yet how utterly
incompetent would many such buildings be to stand alone! So long, too,
as we are a manufacturing people, must we have huge mills crowded full
with heavy apparatus, vibrating machinery, and _human lives_. Have we
forgotten Lawrence? Let us not wait for another such holocaust ere we
learn wisdom. We can do without ornament, but we must have safety. A
mere increase of dead weight is no remedy; there should be a
well-studied mechanical disposition of material. If buttresses are
applied to warehouses and factories with sole reference to their
utility, elegance will grow upon them afterward as naturally as leaves
grow upon trees.

Material must depend much upon locality, but iron is undoubtedly to hold
an important place in our architecture. Already it is extensively used,
but does not seem to command general favor. The reason is that nearly
everything that has been done with it so far is not iron architecture,
but stone architecture done in iron. We do not let it speak its own
language; the truss, the tie rod, and the girder are kept out of sight,
while every possible display is made of consoles and cornices and
Corinthian columns and balustrades, and all sorts of foreign
expressions. No wonder that it is unable to give an account of itself
with all these false witnesses. Stone houses should be made of stone,
and if made of wood or iron or plaster, they are nothing but shams,
unenduring and unsatisfactory.

Now architecture requires the least amount of material that is
compatible with the greatest amount of strength. The forms of different
materials must be varied to suit their texture, according as it is
fibrous or crystalline, tough or brittle. Iron, of course, requires a
peculiar treatment. At the risk of being charged with pedantry, we say
that there have never been but two iron buildings, of any pretension, in
this country--the Niagara Suspension Bridge and the Crystal Palace at
New York. The first still speaks for itself; and of the latter, no one
who saw it can forget what an exquisite structure it was, so light and
airy and elegant, and yet so strong. It was but a bird cage, though,
compared with its enormous prototype at Sydenham. That is unquestionably
one of the wonders of the world; its internal _coup d'oeil_ is without
a parallel. Fancy a broad level vista,